


Who’s left and who’s leaving

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Missing Scene, Some angst, h50 episode 10.07, if steve never adopted nahele he at least still mentors him and they’re close, this is one of many hills i will die on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28275303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: The first time he calls that week, Steve doesn’t answer. Nahele has a bad feeling about it, but he forces himself to let it go, even though it’s not like Steve. It’s probably nothing.Or: A kitchen full of Nahele and Danny and an absence of Steve.
Relationships: Nahele Huikala & Danny "Danno" Williams, Nahele Huikala & Steve McGarrett, Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 9
Kudos: 104





	Who’s left and who’s leaving

**Author's Note:**

> Been reading through my drafts, and there are so many tiny Nahele-related fics! Canon may have forgotten about him at a certain point, but fandom never did – case in point, this missing scene type thing I wrote after 10.07, the episode in which Steve runs off to Mexico in hopes of saving Doris from herself.
> 
> The title comes from the song _Left and Leaving_ by The Weakerthans.

The first time he calls that week, Steve doesn’t answer. Nahele has a bad feeling about it, but he forces himself to let it go, even though it’s not like Steve. It’s probably nothing. Most likely Steve lost his phone, or he jumped in the water and it got drowned, or something equally unavoidable in Steve’s line of work happened that Danny would probably yell at him for. 

Steve doesn’t pick up the second time, either. Nahele’s finger hovers briefly over Danny’s number that time, but Steve gave it to him for emergencies. There’s no reason to think this is an emergency.

He drops by Steve’s place the next day, just to make sure. He doesn’t ring the doorbell because he’s done that exactly once in his life, not long after they met, and that was when Steve told him he didn’t have to do that and gave him a key, even though it had only been weeks since Nahele stole Steve’s car. Steve’s weird like that, sometimes. 

The front door is open, as it usually is, so Nahele walks right in, as he usually does. There’s nobody in the living room but there’s noise from the kitchen. It inspires hope for only a moment, until Nahele goes in there and finds Danny at the stove, and that slightly unsettled feeling telling him that something is off comes back full force.

Eddie is sitting next to Danny, watching the human handle food, but as soon as Nahele comes in Eddie gets up to greet him. Nahele pets him absently. All of his attention is on Danny, who doesn’t seem surprised to see him. “Hey buddy.”

None of this is good. Danny is here often enough, but rarely without Steve, and if Steve were anywhere in the house Danny would have made mention of it by now. Danny is not someone who goes silent about the small stuff, especially not if it’s something he could rag on Steve for a little, like unlucky timing for bathroom breaks. Worse: it looks like Danny is boiling chicken breast and nothing else, which is something Steve is supposed to do for Eddie every week.

Nahele takes it all in and his stomach sinks, but he wishes it wouldn’t. And maybe it doesn’t have to – maybe it’s all still a giant misunderstanding. Maybe, if he doesn’t ask, Steve is going to come wandering in from outside in a moment, still dripping from a swim, and he’ll grin at Nahele and they’ll all share Danny’s strange unseasoned boiled chicken lunch after Steve has showered.

Danny’s expression goes kind of weird and angry for a moment before he pushes it back into something indifferent. “Guess he didn’t leave you a note, huh?”

So much for that.

Nahele kneels to better pet Eddie and Eddie plops down on his ass and leans into him, like he needs the cuddles as much as Nahele does. “Where did he go this time?” Joe White is dead and Steve had seemed to be doing better about it, so it’s probably not Montana again.

“Mexico,” Danny says. “His mom is there. He’s trying to bring her home.”

Nahele doesn’t know much about Steve’s mom – most of what he has garnered comes from off-hand remarks Danny made over the years and from Mary’s sporadic visits – but he does remember Steve telling him that she had left her family. Multiple times. “Why?”

“It’s his mom.”

Nahele thinks about his dad and wishes he didn’t understand that. He gets so lost in his thoughts and the repetitive calming motion of stroking Eddie’s fur that he startles when there’s a hand on his shoulder. 

It’s Danny, standing right next to him. “I have Charlie this weekend and if you can make it on Saturday, he’d love to see you. We’re making our own pizza for dinner.”

Nahele straightens up. He’s taller than Danny like that, but he still feels small. He busies himself brushing the dog hair off his pants, which is hopeless and will therefore take him as long as he wants. “And Steve?”

“He won’t be there. He’ll probably be a while.”

Nahele stops pretending to care about dog hair. He jerks his head up to look at Danny, who watches him right back. Danny and the tight lines around his mouth and the tiny bit of hurt in his eyes that he hides well but that Nahele knows too personally to miss- It untwists a little bit of the knot Nahele’s insides coiled themselves into. Getting left behind doesn’t suck any less the more it happens.

“He’ll be back,” Danny says, and it doesn’t reassure Nahele one bit because he’s too old to fall for empty promises from adults, but that also means he can see that Danny is trying to convince himself as much as anyone.

Nahele suddenly doesn’t want to leave Danny to cope with this on his own, either. “Do you want help cutting up that chicken?”

“Sure. Do you know where Steve keeps his cutting boards?”

Nahele does, so he grabs a board and a knife, and Danny passes him the breasts with a fork and pours rice into the pan to cook in the left-over broth. Danny stirs the water and Nahele carefully cuts the hot chicken, and they’re standing there side by side in Steve’s kitchen, cooking for Steve’s dog, missing Steve.

They’re not alone, though.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I hope you, too, can find someone to quietly help you prepare dog food in low moments. Comments are always welcome! ❤ 
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
